U.S. Pat. No. 3,984,574, issued to Comollo, which patent is incorporated herein by reference, discloses abhesive chewing gums and abhesive chewing gum bases where non-tack properties are achieved by eliminating conventional chewing gum base ingredients found to contribute to chewing gum tackiness and by substituting therefore non-tacky ingredients. Specifically, Comollo discovered that three classes of materials account for conventional chewing gum tackiness. These tacky materials were certain natural elastomers, certain resins and the petroleum waxes.
Comollo eliminated natural and certain synthetic elastomers from his chewing gum bases and substituted in their place one or more non-tacky synthetic elastomers such as polyisobutylene, polyisoprene, isobutylene isoprene copolymer, and styrene-butadiene copolymers. Comollo also eliminated the tack producing natural resins and modified natural resins and used instead relatively high amounts of hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils or animal fats. Finally, Comollo completely excluded waxes from the gum bases but substituted polyvinyl acetate, fatty acids, and certain mono and diglycerides of fatty acids.
Comollo did not specifically recognize any particular difference in the release of flavoring agents or flavoring ingredients from his reformulated wax-free gum bases or chewing gums. We have now discovered that certain wax-free chewing gum bases and wax-free chewing gums formulated with these wax-free bases provide for very rapid and perceptually seemingly immediate release of certain flavoring agents. This apparent rapid rate of flavor release is not observed with chewing gums formulated with paraffin waxes, or in general with petroleum waxes. This rapid release is also not observed with certain flavors. We have now determined those characteristics of the flavoring agents and their flavoring ingredients which, when formulated with petroleum wax-free gum bases, lead to rapid release of flavor. When certain flavoring ingredients are selected, these phenomena can lead to wax-free chewing gums having perceived rapid cooling effects and perceived rapid breath freshening.